Cover Image: An Immense World

An Immense World

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Member Reviews

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

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Glad to have this as book of the month at work and to be able to spread the word about it. Incredibly fascinating, clearly very well researched and a real eye-opener. So much of the science was far beyond my understanding, but the writing is accessible, and it never feels as if you’re being talked down to. Brilliant read!

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Very readable and packed with fascinating examples of the many ways in which animals perceive the world. It's a reminder that that we are not at the top of the world with other animals assembled in a hierarchy according to how much or little they resemble us. We need to take the imaginative leap to try and understand how and what other creatures experience, and to learn from it.

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Marvel at the many and wondrous ways animals sense the world around them

I love nature and science but this book is mind-blowingly fascinating. My view of the world expanded with every page and I am indebted to the author for giving me a glimpse of how other animals perceive it. It should really be called ‘immense worlds’ as every species has it’s own unique way of reading and interpreting the environment it lives in.

Our fellow creatures seem to have developed senses for everything, giving them natural super-powers. From Mantees having small whiskers all over their bodies that enable them to feel water moving a millionth of a metre from a metre away, to bats having air-flow sensing hairs on their wings that enable their acrobatic flight and snakes having infra-red sensors that allow them to ‘see’ infra-red and so much more this is a book that makes you marvel at nature’s wonders.

If you’re fascinated by life you’ll be overwhelmed by the end of this book.I loved it and would recommend it to anyone who loves nature.

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My thanks to Random House U.K. Vintage Bodley Head for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘An Immense World’ by Ed Yong.

This book’s subtitle is ‘How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us’. It was chosen as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ in late June.

Yong is an award winning science journalist. Here he explores the concept of the Umwelt, a term defined by zoologist Jakob von Uexküll. It refers to the unique sensory bubble for each animal that allows them to perceive a tiny sliver of an immense world, its perceptual world.

I found this a fascinating book in terms of relaying a great deal of information about how various animals perceive the world. It’s not just about mammals but covers all kinds of creatures including birds, fish, insects and invertebrates.

Some of information is quite strange like how whole living scallop have eyes arrayed along the inner edge of its shell, in some species up to 200! Yong quotes a researcher describing them as ‘looking like neon blueberries’, which he finds ‘funny and horrifying and charming’.

Yong’s chapters cover more than the traditional senses, like sight and hearing, but breaks things down illustrating how animals perceive more subtle aspects of their world, including colours, magnetic and electrical fields, pain, and heat.

It’s a book that is probably best read slowly or to dip into; though I did read it over the course of a few days. It has plenty of footnotes throughout and finishes with an extensive bibliography and index.

Highly recommended.

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I reviewed An Immense World by Ed Yung for recommendation site LoveReading. I have chosen the book as a LoveReading Star Book and Liz Pick of the Month. Please see the site for full review.

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This was such an interesting and informative read showing how other animals/species experience the world around them through their senses. It was a fascinating read.

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A look at the world through other species' eyes/nose/ears/tongue/skin...

An Immense World concerns itself with umwelt, the way other creatures experience their environment. Each chapter takes a different sense, then expands it to illustrate the myriad ways in which organisms have adapted to survive in their habitat.

Science journalist Ed Yong's research is all-encompassing. and demonstrates his enthusiasm for the subject. He takes pains to include the history of our understanding of the senses, with the inference being there is still much to learn.

Just amazing. A book to come back to time and again.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

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DNF
Unfortunately I cannot continue reading this version as there is an error within itbwhere any word with "ff" within it is not there. So words like off, and sniff are o and sni. I realose I could easily get around this but it is interfering with my enjoyment so I would rather wait for the book to come out as a finished copy.

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WOW - Ed Yong, author and science journalist, takes us on a tour of senses and how the animal kingdom widely has developed and used senses. The introductory chapter got my attention very well. The idea of a room with many occupants of different species each with different primary senses. The range of what would be perceived by very varied species is remarkable and thought provoking. The author opens with some thoughts on the approach of this book. The idea is to avoid comparisons and "ranking". This does make sense for many reasons really. There are very widely differing habitats and difficulties in designing experiments when we don't have much of an understanding of the senses we are trying to test.

Throw in the difficulties of trying to decide just what senses there actually are and how to define and you get some feeling for the complexities being tackled in this book. I did like the quote from Proust - ""not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes". It felt appropriate.

I found the journey I was taken on was fascinating - almost to an overwhelming degree. When I'm reading a book to review I generally read just that book continuously. This one I took breaks from. In part there was just so much to process here (it wasn't a subject I knew much about). This is not a criticism of the book however. It is written in a very accessible way for something quite so complex.

While I mentioned that the book started with the idea that it was not going to make comparisons and ranking of senses I do think it "failed" on the comparisons aspect. However it would be virtually impossible to write this book about senses within a species without referring to the senses that are predominant in another species. I didn't find that this bothered me.

It's hard to come up with one or two favourite topics in this book - there were just so many for me. The sheer sensitivity of some animal senses just blew me away. That owls have asymmetric ears that are accurate to 2 degrees. That otters and seals can track the "wake" left by fishes from 200 yards away. That birds hear bird song very differently from us and that the song varies in ways we simply cannot hear. That turtles have inbuilt location senses that are remarkable. There is simply so much in here to be fascinated by.

I found the last chapter is quite brief but very interesting. It did feel slightly out of sync with the rest of the book. It concerns the way we disrupt animal senses in some quite dramatic fashions. For me it was a subject that could have had more space devoted to it - maybe another book!

This really is not a book to rush. It deserves time to be taken over it and will reward the interested reader amply. For me the fact that in most cases our senses are relatively poor was an overarching aspect of this. Related to that is the fact that, certainly in the past, we have attempted to judge animals senses by what we think they might be like. This is simply so far from the mark in so many cases as to emphasize how little we know and understand about this world we inhabit and abuse. This is a fascinating insight into the diversity of animal senses - I'd happily recommend it to anyone with any interest in the subject.

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This is a book all about the senses. It looks at those we are familiar with every day such as sight, smell, taste, touch and sound, but also discusses other senses like electrical and magnetic fields and vibrations. But crucially, this look looks at the senses via the experiences of other organisms: animals, birds and insects. We learn how these different senses work in different creatures and how their experiences of the world vary from our human one.

The science is explained in a very straightforward, easy to understand manner and it never becomes too technical. Each chapter is jam packed with new facts and information and because of this, it is not a book to be read in one sitting. Read it in small chunks so you can really appreciate just how much there is to learn from this book. There are many different examples from all across the animal world to illustrate how each sense is experienced in wildly varied ways and it is a book that will constantly keep you entertained and wanting to learn more.

My only gripe is the overuse of footnotes. They are present on nearly every page and often go over onto the next page, making the reading experience feel clunky as I was constantly reading back over what I’d just read to find the context for the footnote. A few footnotes is fine, but many of those in this book are substantial enough that they could have been made part of the main text. For this reason, I have knocked a star off my review because, although the content of the book is excellent, I also want an enjoyable reading experience which I did not have because of the copious footnotes.

With thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK for providing an advance review copy. All opinions in this review are my own.

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Ever wondered how a bat views the world? Or the 3rd arm of an octopus? How about your pet dog - it can't be that different to us, can it?

This book looks at the world of senses: how they vary between animals and how those differences influence their perception of the world they inhabit. You are going to read the word "umwelt" an awful lot!

The senses include ones you would expect: smell, hearing, sight and how they vary; but also things like echolocation, electric and magnetic fields, heat, vibrations etc. Chapters break down these senses - how they work (or we think they do), how we, as humans, are able to interpret them and what they are used for.

There's a strong focus on trying to remove the human-focused experience of a sense so that we can attempt to appreciate how animals really experience the world - and how that is important when we consider our impact on the environment.

Ed Yong writes with a sense of lightness and humour - explaining what can be pretty complex, and often quite new, science in a way that is understandable whilst avoiding the feeling of being dumbed down.

If you have even a vague interest in animal science or the natural world then I can't recommend this enough.

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I'm fascinated at alternative ways of viewing the world, and this book takes things quite literally.

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Ed Yong has produced an immense book that delves into the mind-blowing world of senses across the animal kingdom - prepare to say "wow" out loud a lot as you read it.

'An Immense World' is not a book you can read in a few sittings. Yong actually expects quite a lot of his readers, which isn't a bad thing. Every page is full of fascinating information. By coincidence, shortly before starting Yong's book, I started listening to 'Sentient' by Jackie Higgins which, perhaps unfortunately, is extremely similar in theme to this book (they even cover a lot of the same scientists). However, I prefer Yong's book, because in true journalistic fashion the author physically meets with many of the scientists whose work he covers, and gets to meet quite a few of the animals too. Which led to quite a few fun moments - a nice injection of brevity and illumination. Another element that makes 'An Immense World' superior, in my view, is the analysis he frequently presents along the lines of "we never used to imagine this... what else are we missing about this animal?". There's a sense of deep wonder and mystery.

For all my praise, I cannot give this book 5 stars. The reason? THE FOOTNOTES. OH MY GOD. Most pages had at least one footnote, sometimes three or even four. On some pages, the footnotes took up at least half the page. I hate the idea of missing out on any information, so I read them all, but it really broke up the narrative for me. Neither did it help that on my e-reader, a lot of the footnotes went over onto the next page. Even more galling is that a lot of them could have easily been folded into the narrative. What I suspect has happened is that Yong went over his word limit, so he simply moved some content to the footnotes. The result is that it sadly diminished my reading experience.

(With thanks to Random House and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

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Having read Ed Yongs previous book (Life contains multitudes, a book I loved- as a microbiologist, it hooked me) I was so excited to read this new one: An immense world. And it did not disappoint!

It’s on such an interesting topic. How the senses of animals give us a glimpse into a unseen realm, one of which we all perceive differently. We live in a world that we all experience in a different way depending on our senses and the picture that builds around us.

This book introduces the concept of ‘Umwelten’ which I just loved. So many things were new to me and I learnt so much. If you’re expecting a cut and dry guide to the senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight, you won’t get that here! Instead? Ed Yong brings the senses to life. He walks you through a word seen through the eyes of another. From different species who perceive the world in extraordinary ways. He takes you out of the human perspective, and into that of a different sense.

There was also a great addition in how the anthropocene (the current age of humans) and how we are changing our environment and how that’s related to affecting wildlife. From the lights bamboozling senses to strange molecules and environmental disruptions and what that means for different species.

It’s written brilliantly and is so engaging. Right when I picked it up and dived into the first few pages, I knew it was going to be a five star read. It’s beautifully written and a perfect example of how non fictions should be. It’s perfect for those who don’t have much background in science and is bound to engage and mystify you. I devoured the pages and banked a lot of amazing knowledge along the way!

Seriously couldn’t recommend enough.

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